A Small Place with So Much Beer (and Empanadas)

Open the door slowly into Woods Polk Station, a minuscule spot for caffeinated beers and occasional
empanadas, now soft-open and officially opening Thursday on Polk Street.

What you’ve got here is like a Tahoe cabin from the MateVeza guys, with wood-planked walls and a
snowy-mountain diorama in the back. But it’s tucked in the old Et Al space, so really it’s like if you
went to a Tahoe cabin... and managed to squeeze three tables and an onyx bar into the hallway past the
living room, and made that hallway the place to be. But a really casual, laid-back hallway. Stuffy hallways
are the worst.

Anyway, yeah, beer with yerba mate in it. They’ve got plenty of that here. The people like it at their
brewery in the Mission. But the eight always-changing taps will have plenty of non-tea beer, too, maybe
Cellarmaker stout or Fort Point’s Kölsch-style ale, and the empanadas are from El Porteño—think
prosciutto with fontina cheese, or chicken with chicken chorizo, olives and raisins.